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US says Syria may be making new types of chemical weapons

The Trump administration says Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government may be developing new, more sophisticated chemical weapons.

In this photo taken on Tuesday, April 4, 2017 and made available Wednesday, April 5, Turkish experts carry a victim of alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syrian city of Idlib, at a local hospital in Reyhanli, Hatay, Turkey.

The Trump administration says Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government may be developing new, more sophisticated chemical weapons.

US officials say the characteristics of recent alleged attacks suggest Syria is producing chemical weapons despite a 2013 deal to destroy its program. The officials say it’s “highly likely” that Syria kept a stockpile of weapons.

The officials also say Syria may be making new kinds of weapons, either to improve their military capability or to escape international accountability.

The officials also say the Islamic State group keeps using chemical weapons such as sulfur mustard and chlorine. The officials say the militants are using shells or improvised explosive devices to deliver the chemicals.

The officials weren’t authorized to discuss the assessment on the record and briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

SAINT PETERSBURG: A
homemade bomb blast at a supermarket in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg injured 10 people Wednesday, officials said, sparking a
probe into attempted murder.

"According to preliminary information, an explosion of
an unidentified object occurred in a store," a spokeswoman for Russia's Investigative
Committee, Svetlana Petrenko, said in a statement.

The blast was caused by a "homemade explosive device
with the power equivalent to 200 grammes of TNT filled with lethal
fragments," she said.

"The investigation is looking at all possible causes of
what happened," she said, adding that a probe for attempted murder had
been launched.

The incident comes several months after Russia's second city
was rocked with a metro bombing in April which killed 16 people and amid
concern that hundreds of Russian citizens who travelled to fight alongside
jihadists groups abroad could pose a mounting security challenge back home.

Rattled by a one-two
punch of betrayal and scandal, Donald Trump on Thursday tried to block the
publication of a bare-knuckle book that portrays his White House as a fetid
stew of backbiting, incompetence and dysfunction. The publishers
responded by moving the release date up by four days to Friday. Trump instructed his
lawyers to prevent the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside
the Trump White House” -- an expose by author and political muckraker Michael
Wolff -- which quotes key Trump aides expressing serious doubt
about his fitness for office. The book -- which
paints Trump as mentally unstable and far out of his depth -- quotes at length
his former ally and chief strategist Steve Bannon, who also received a “cease and
desist” order from Trump’s attorneys. “Your publication of
the false/baseless statements about Mr. Trump gives rise to, among other
claims, defamation by libel, defamation by libel per se, false light invasion
of privacy, tortious interference with contractual relations, an…